dalits of india

Immediately after I passed my degree course of mass communication from Karim City College jamshedpur, Jharkhand Govt. advertised a vacancy for state communication officer. One of my friends and I applied for this post. We cleared the written test with distinction and after the interview we both were on top of the list markswise. Now final verdict state's information and broadcasting ministry had to take. But everybody was quite sure that it has to be one of us. The result got announced after five days and for our surprise it was none of us. Not even anyone from the mirit list. It was a tribal girl who was somewhere in the lowest position in mark list. Later on we were told that her being a tribal came in her favour. That was the last government job I ever applied for...and even in the future government job will be the last thing I will opt for.

I mean how fare it is in a democratic and equal society to be denied something in the name of cast and religion. In my assembly constituency (simaria, chatra) and hundreds of other constituencies in india there is a rule that a person from forward class can not run in election. At one hand we take pride in being world's largest democracy but at other hand we keep amending our constitution to refrain our own citizen from availing the democracy. The first right democracy gives is to select a leader and get selected as a leader. But most of upper cast of our country does not have even that basic right. should we even call ours a democratic country?

In spite of several protests government has been very kind in increasing reservation quota. Unfortunately India's 65-70% population comes from backward and sc-st classes. Therefor Politicians see them as a winning goats. Increase in reservation quota means automatic gain in vote bank. That's why every new government takes it as their forfather's duty to increase the reservation quota to show their respect to popular votes. Nobody is ready to look into it deeply and see whether fifty years have reservation has benefited the indian society a bit. Do any of us know about a single OBC or SC-ST poor family who got benefited by reservation and today they are rich? I do not know any.

The whole objective of reservation was to make underprevileged people a self -reliant...not to make them handicap. It was suppose to make everybody equal...not to create a wide gap in the society. The whole reservation issue has become too political in nature to help anyone than politicians. It was suppose to help create awareness among the people living under the poverty line, it was suppose to help educating people who have no mean of education. It has failed in it's primary objective.

Some people in india do need reservation. But they need to be identified and then supported so that they also can join the mainstream. Cast based reservation is a monopoly of vote bank ... nothing else. Here I have tried to do a small research with the help of one of my delhi based friends which shows the reality about the states of brahmins - one of the uppermost cast in indian cast system. The public image of the Brahmins, for instance is that of an affluent, pampered class. But is it so today?

There are 50 Sulabh Shauchalayas (public toilets) in Delhi; all of them are cleaned and looked after by Brahmins (this very welcome public institution was started by a Brahmin). A far cry from the elitist image that Brahmins have! There are five to six Brahmins manning each Shauchalaya. They came to Delhi eight to ten years back looking for a source of income, as they were a minority in most of their villages, where Dalits are in majority (60 per cent to 65 per cent). In most villages in UP and Bihar, Dalits have a union which helps them secure jobs in villages.

You also find Brahmin rickshaw pullers in Delhi. 50 per cent of Patel Nagar's rickshaw pullers are Brahmins who like their brethren have moved to the city looking for jobs for lack of employment opportunities and poor education in their villages. Did you also know that most rickshaw pullers in Banaras are Brahmins?

This reverse discrimination is also found in bureaucracy and politics. Most of the intellectual Brahmin Tamil class has emigrated outside Tamil Nadu. Only 5 seats out of 600 in the combined UP and Bihar assembly are held by Brahmins -- the rest are in the hands of the Yadavs. 400,000 Brahmins of the Kashmir valley, the once respected Kashmiri Pandits, now live as refugees in their own country, sometimes in refugee camps in Jammu and Delhi in appalling conditions. But who gives a damn about them? Their vote bank is negligible.

And this is not limited to the North alone. 75 per cent of domestic help and cooks in Andhra Pradesh are Brahmins. A study of the Brahmin community in a district in Andhra Pradesh (Brahmins of India by J Radhakrishna, published by Chugh Publications) reveals that today all purohits live below the poverty line.
Eighty per cent of those surveyed stated that their poverty and traditional style of dress and hair (tuft) had made them the butt of ridicule. Financial constraints coupled with the existing system of reservations for the 'backward classes' prevented them from providing secular education to their children.

In fact, according to this study there has been an overall decline in the number of Brahmin students. With the average income of Brahmins being less than that of non-Brahmins, a high percentage of Brahmin students drop out at the intermediate level. In the 5 to 18 year age group, 44 per cent Brahmin students stopped education at the primary level and 36 per cent at the pre-matriculation level.

The study also found that 55 per cent of all Brahmins lived below the poverty line -- below a per capita income of Rs 650 a month. Since 45 per cent of the total population of India is officially stated to be below the poverty line it follows that the percentage of destitute Brahmins is 10 per cent higher than the all-India figure.
There is no reason to believe that the condition of Brahmins in other parts of the country is different. In this connection it would be revealing to quote the per capita income of various communities as stated by the Karnataka finance minister in the state assembly: Christians Rs 1,562, Vokkaligas Rs 914, Muslims Rs 794, Scheduled castes Rs 680, Scheduled Tribes Rs 577 and Brahmins Rs 537. Appalling poverty compels many Brahmins to migrate to towns leading to spatial dispersal and consequent decline in their local influence and institutions. Brahmins initially turned to government jobs and modern occupations such as law and medicine. But preferential policies for the non-Brahmins have forced Brahmins to retreat in these spheres as well.

According to the Andhra Pradesh study, the largest percentage of Brahmins today are employed as domestic servants. The unemployment rate among them is as high as 75 per cent. Seventy percent of Brahmins are still relying on their hereditary vocation. There are hundreds of families that are surviving on just Rs 500 per month as priests in various temples (Department of Endowments statistics).
Priests are under tremendous difficulty today, sometimes even forced to beg for alms for survival. There are innumerable instances in which Brahmin priests who spent a lifetime studying Vedas are being ridiculed and disrespected.

At Tamil Nadu's Ranganathaswamy Temple, a priest's monthly salary is Rs 300 (Census Department studies) and a daily allowance of one measure of rice. The government staff at the same temple receive Rs 2,500 plus per month. But these facts have not modified the priests' reputation as 'haves' and as 'exploiters.' The destitution of Hindu priests has moved none, not even the parties known for Hindu sympathy.

The Indian government gives Rs 1,000 crores (Rs 10 billion) for salaries of imams in mosques and Rs 200 crores (Rs 2 billion) as Haj subsidies. But no such help is available to Brahmins and upper castes. As a result, not only the Brahmins, but also some of the other upper castes in the lower middle class are suffering in silence today, seeing everyday the hell advancing closer.

These findings leave me wondering about the government's cast based reservation policies. It also makes me wonder about who really is dalit of india? We need to find and support them so that the dream of one and equal india can become a reality...